I don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since…
> But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists
I know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
How will you ensure the internet is not used for crime, to harass or coerce witnesses or otherwise act against a need for resocialization?
I don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since…
I don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since…
>The whole private prison thing makes me want to vomit. Makes me vomit too. We've created a systematic punishment machine rather than a reformation and education system. And systematic profiteering machine that's corrupting the objective of the Justice system.
This way, the system also punishes everyone involved but not directly the defendant/accused. And it does so via the pocketbook.
> The reform passed 3:2 along partisan lines, with the appointed Democrat commissioners voting in favor, and Republicans against. it's kind of terrifying to think that a single republican in the wrong place could have blocked a measure affecting millions of people.
It's just odd on its face that so many of these decisions, which absolutely have an otherwise legislative character, are being made by the executive branch.
The legislative branch has been derelict in its duties for a decade. Someone has to pick up the slack.
I know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
I know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
Extremely controversial. Stopping prisoners from harassing their victims/witnesses against them/enemies or organising others to do their dirty work externally is already a massive problem. Prisons have the ability to listen to calls and read mail to try and curtail it. Giving them access to the internet makes all of this far easier, and monitoring it far more expensive. Not to mention that now they can use the intern…
It's a lot easier to curtail things like this on the internet. It would be dirt easy to set it up to only allow certain content (let's call it "constructive" content, like Wikipedia, various news sources, etc.), while blocking content with specific keywords. Prisons have a finite amount of traffic, it's not like we're setting up the GFC. It's dirt simple and dirt cheap to set iptables up to handle this with the limited traffic coming out of a single prison. I could probably do it for less than $400 on some budget hardware, and have it be pretty solid/reliable. We should be allowing these people access to the information and knowledge so they can better themselves and broaden their horizons. We can do that while simultaneously blocking their ability to "contribute" to the global discussion if we need/want to.
I don't understand why the Republicans voted against. Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. Now if they had an alternative proposal that required prisons to have two or more vendors, I'd be totally onboard with not setting an artificial price restriction. Since…
>>I don't understand why the Republicans voted against.
>>Look, I get it, you support private industry.
So in the 60's the Republicans launched a thing called The Southern Strategy that was literally the Republican Party courting white racists. They never stopped.
Now that openly calling for segregation is frowned upon making the criminal justice system as punitive as possible is one of the ways they keep that strategy going. See also: Welfare 'reform'
> Look, I get it, you support private industry. But let's remember context, you support capitalism where COMPETITION exists, in this situation it is an artificially created monopoly of one company. I mean, that's the definition of a classical liberal, I'm not sure it's described the Republican Party for a long time though.
Sounds more liberal to me. To have a monopoly within a government entity.
Liberal in the Milton Friedman sense, not the Bernie Sanders sense.
I know this is controversial, but the humane thing to do is to allow inmates unfettered access to the internet. Contrary to the orthodoxy on the matter, I assert that this will reduce the strength and relevance of 'prison gangs.'
Extremely controversial. Stopping prisoners from harassing their victims/witnesses against them/enemies or organising others to do their dirty work externally is already a massive problem. Prisons have the ability to listen to calls and read mail to try and curtail it. Giving them access to the internet makes all of this far easier, and monitoring it far more expensive. Not to mention that now they can use the intern…
Read-only access, then: allow limited access without the ability to send messages, such as with software that disables the keyboard (but not the mouse) everywhere except the address bar, combined with monitoring.